Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Simply put, China has three core strategic interests. Paramount among them is the maintenance of domestic security. Historically, when China involves itself in global trade, as it did in the 19th and early 20th century, the coastal region prospers, while the interior of China -- which begins about 100 miles from the coast and runs about 1,000 miles to the west -- languishes. Roughly 80 percent of all Chinese citizens currently have household incomes lower than the average household income in Bolivia. Most of China's poor are located west of the richer coastal region; this disparity of wealth time and again has exposed tensions between the interests of the coast and those of the interior. After a failed rising in Shanghai in 1927, Mao Zedong exploited these tensions by undertaking the Long March into the interior, raising a peasant army and ultimately conquering the coastal region. He shut China off from the international trading system, leaving China more united and equal, but extremely poor. The current government has sought a more wealth-friendly means of achieving stability: buying popular loyalty with mass employment. Plans for industrial expansion are implemented with little thought to markets or margins; instead, maximum employment is the driving goal. Private savings are harnessed to finance the industrial effort, leaving little domestic capital to purchase the output. China must export accordingly. China's second strategic concern derives from the first. China's industrial base by design produces more than its domestic economy can consume, so China must export goods to the rest of the world while importing raw materials. The Chinese therefore must do everything possible to ensure international demand for their exports. This includes a range of activities, from investing money in the economies of consumer countries to establishing unfettered access to global sea-lanes. The third strategic interest is in maintaining control over buffer states. The population of the historic Han Chinese heartland is clustered in the eastern third of the country, where ample precipitation distinguishes it from the much more dry and arid central and western thirds." (STRATFOR)

"'Ronnie and I were never big New Year’s Eve people. But we loved the New Year’s Eves at Sunnylands,' says Nancy Reagan of the annual dinner dances that the late billionaire publisher, philanthropist, and power broker Walter Annenberg and his wife, Lee—short for Leonore—used to give at their plush 200-acre estate in Rancho Mirage, near Palm Springs. 'They were wonderful parties. People came from all over: London, Paris, New York—everywhere.' As Lee Annenberg recalled in her waning years, 'We had nine tables, and Tony Rose’s Orchestra, and, boy, did we really have fun.” Among those who made the cut: Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller, Malcolm Forbes, Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Betsy Bloomingdale, and nearly the entire top rung of the Reagan administration, including Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, National-Security Adviser Colin Powell, and White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker. The Reagans attended 18 times between 1974 and 1993, including all eight years that he was president. Six other U.S. presidents were also guests at Sunnylands, starting with Dwight Eisenhower, who liked to play golf on the estate’s nine-hole course and fish in its 11 man-made lakes, which would be amply stocked with bass and trout before his visits." (VanityFair)

"The exciting grand finale of the Fall/Winter 2012 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week was a sold-out FGI (Fashion Group International) VIP screening of The Tents. The Tents was filmed in 2010, during the last season when Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week was held in Bryant Park. A first film by the very talented James Belzer and cinematographer Marcus K. Jones, co-produced by Lisa Silhanek, The Tents documents the history of the constantly evolving NYC fashion industry, as well as the runway shows of dynamic designers since its formalization in 1993 as 'Fashion Week.' It is also the story of Fern Mallis, past Executive Director of 7th on Sixth, VP of Marketing for IMG (International Management Group) – one amazingly dedicated Femme – whose force of conviction and unbridled tenacity, along with that of the three-time Coty Award-winning designer and past President of the CFDA, Stan Herman, is responsible for New York Fashion Week, as we now know it." (NYSocialDiary)

"Believe it or not, I get a lot more blowback and outrage, whining and emails and phone calls—sometimes with the person identified, sometimes not—from my restaurant columns. No kidding.I believe that if you cover commercial real estate, you can’t get that much bad negative blowback if you’re accurate. The handful of times … perhaps I overinterpreted the fact that a lease was up and it was not going to be renewed … generally, I get a polite email or call from their rep saying, 'Not really true.' Let me read you something. Recently I did a restaurant story saying that this place called Romera, which is this wildly expensive restaurant in the Dream Downtown Hotel, right, was probably on its way out because the owners of the space, the Chatwal family, were talking to other chefs about taking over. I got an email just last night before I left [the office] from an unidentified complainant saying, 'You are the most malignant journalist the New York Post has. You really should be ashamed of yourself for trying so hard to sabotage such a concept. I was thoroughly disgusted by your hearsay gossip article and can see you have nothing to do with yourself than write trash. Keep up the great work.' Nobody really attacks me personally. That’s extraordinarily rare. But you are conscious that what you write has consequences." (Steve Cuozzo/Observer)

"It wouldn't be a fashion week after-party without a fun but totally random mix of celebs showing up, and Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Kenzo delivered with their Paris Fashion Week bash last night. Party-goers included Diddy, Susanne Bartsch and Robyn. Oh to be a fly on the wall as those three mingled." (Papermag)